2025’s Messy Festivals Might Be Exactly What The Oscars Need

2025 has felt like a strange year at the movies. After coming into it with so much hope, and often so much hype, only a handful of films have emerged to dominate the conversation, the box office, or both. The defining tone of the year so far seems to be that feeling of liking something when you had hoped you would love it.

I had expected the fall festival season to clear up that air of gentle disappointment. Instead, Venice, Telluride, and Toronto only fueled this narrative.

Of the high-profile awards hopefuls that premiered over the past few weeks, Hamnet has been the defining film. After being the talk of Telluride, Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of a heartrending 2020 novel carried its momentum over to TIFF, where it took home the coveted Audience Award. With enough juicy narratives to keep its campaign running, it’d be fair to call this movie our Best Picture frontrunner at this point in the race.

It’s already struck a chord here at ScreenRant, too. In her Hamnet review out of TIFF, Movies Editor Rachel LaBonte gave the movie a perfect 10/10.

But the festivals didn’t do as much to fill out the pack. Plenty of films were reviewed well, and high-profile тιтles like Frankenstein, The Smashing Machine, and Jay Kelly will certainly remain in the hunt, but few generated that excitement that signals a surefire Oscar nominee. Case in point: After weeks of premieres, Variety‘s running Best Picture prediction ranking puts three movies no one has seen yet in the top 10.

For this year in movies, that doesn’t do much to cheer me up. But I’m now much more excited for the 2026 Oscars than I was just a few days ago.

The 2026 Best Picture Race Is Officially Up For Grabs

Paul Mescal looks out as William Shakespeare in Hamnet

The worst case scenario for a year with few truly exciting Hollywood movies is that a bunch of mediocre ones end up contending for awards. It’s possible, and the Oscars of old might’ve done it. But there is another, more fun outcome, which I hope this evolving voting body will make happen.

If the usual suspects don’t yield ten movies worthy of laying claim to best of the year, the Academy will need to broaden its search. Great movies that might’ve been ignored, or could’ve been seen as contenders up until getting snubbed on nomination day, could actually make the cut.

The first тιтle that likely comes to mind for many of you reading this is Sinners, one of 2025’s only undeniable phenomena. To me, it bears many of the hallmarks of an Oscars whiff – one of those great movies that lives on in part because the Academy “gets it wrong” and doesn’t take it seriously enough.

When the movie came out in April (not exactly a prime awards slot), I heard it discussed as a definite crafts play and a hopeful for above-the-line prizes, with plenty of asterisks. Now, it’s arguably Hamnet‘s biggest compeтιтion for Best Picture.

But Sinners always looked like it had a chance – could Weapons, the year’s other buzzy, genre-bending horror film, sneak into the Best Picture ten? Surprise megahit KPop Demon Hunters is sure to be one of 2025’s defining movies, so why shouldn’t it contend for more than just Best Animated Feature?

Huntrx standing back to back as demons leap toward them in KPop Demon Hunters

The Academy has also shown an inclination to include highlights of international cinema in recent years, and Cannes runner-up Sentimental Value is already positioned as a major player. Now, Brazil’s The Secret Agent is gaining steam. And No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook’s Korean comedy-thriller, actually managed to build hype at the fall festivals. Could it overcome Park’s recent expulsion from the WGA to gain traction?

A wide-open Best Picture race doesn’t just benefit that category, either. Those performances in out-of-the-box films that people love to champion are suddenly much harder to ignore. And it’s not unrealistic that the only two previous winners nominated for Best Director are Chloé Zhao and Kathryn Bigelow, two of the only three women who have ever won.

A broadened field also makes the rest of this year unusually thrilling, from an Oscars perspective. A late-season surge could come from more than just Marty Supreme in that usual-suspect December slot. What happens if Predator: Badlands or The Running Man deliver more than just sci-fi blockbuster thrills?

All that to say, this Oscars season is so far one of many questions and few certainties. Unusual names are likely to find themselves in the mix. That’s a lot more fun than spending months of precursors seeing the same few movies nominated again and again until they inevitably slot into place on the big day.